Moving into the work

It is important in working with people in comas to be especially careful not to hurt them physically, and thus undo the medical healing that is being done. It is hard enough to follow feedback when working with someone who can also verbally tell you what does and doesn't feel good. It is even more difficult with someone in coma, so I have a few basic principles.

First of all, I ask if there is anything that should not be done, for the person's medical safety. Perhaps they have an open sore, or an injury that I need to be especially careful with. I may need to watch, if I am getting them excited, that their blood pressure doesn't go up past a certain point.

My second basic principle is to be gentle. That doesn't mean that if I know an arm is all right, I might not give this arm some strong resistance. It does mean that my general touch is gentle, especially in areas that I might hurt someone. In the fifteen plus years I have worked with coma patients, I have as far as I know never hurt anyone at all, and this is very important to me.

To know something about how we do coma work, it is important to understand some of the basic principles of Process Work with symptoms that we apply to the coma.

Basic principles of Process Oriented symptom/coma work:

1. The work is so simple that it is difficult. because we are looking for a child's open, Buddha-like mind. How do we develop a fascination again with our bodies that is beyond fear, and just curiosity, that can take in all of the medical information and yet keep open to what is right in front of our eyes, even when that may at times contradict the medical approach? This is especially difficult when we are working with people in hospitals and other such settings where the collective view may not reflect this.

2. In the symptom is the possible solution, the key, if we go deeply into it. Otherwise it is like a dream unexplored. The symptom gives us the clues we need to understand what our being is trying to express, and what directions the symptom is moving us in.

3. Body symptoms aren't just personal. We carry with us our collective current experiences, our personal and collective histories, and sometimes our family history. We can find the current war, the holocaust, our family issues, all in our body symptoms and experiences.

4. Our bodies know best how to heal themselves, if we can very closely follow our experiences and what nature wants to happen.

5. A symptom is like a fixed state. Going back into dreaming rekindles an energetic flow to the body.

6. The sentient level is pre-dream and pre-symptom. It may be possible by going into the sentient level to step out of time and space, and manifest the energy behind the symptom in a new way rather than just keep perpetuating the current expression of the symptom.

7. Process work isn't pro or con any type of medicine. We follow the person's process, unfolding their dreams and inner guidance, which at one moment may lead to doing nothing, at another to seeing a naturopath or Chinese medicine person, and the next moment to seeing a surgeon.

8. One of the main reasons clients often don't follow the advice of their health practitioner is that they aren't at a place in their development to do this. For example, it is easy to say you should stop smoking, or lose weight, but a person's decision to do so involves all kinds of feeling issues that need to be addressed first.